


One Quick Mission

by AptGoodTouch



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, going to add tags and up the rating if needed, it's on pandora that says a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 17:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5214728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AptGoodTouch/pseuds/AptGoodTouch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Hyperion scientist, Aedan, receives an assignment: head down to Pandora, collect samples of the wildlife, take them back to Jack's newly-established Wildlife Center. But what he hopes will be a quick trip ends up longer than expected. </p>
<p>#thanksPandora </p>
<p>(this is incredibly self-indulgent, but I figured I could share it. Time frame is roughly between the PreSequel and 2.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Quick Mission

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cytokiine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cytokiine/gifts).



Aedan exhaled, closing his blue eyes before he looked back down at the data pad, brushing strands of red hair away from his face. Right.

 

Extra shirts? Check.

Underwear? Check.

Hair brush, toothbrush, toothpaste? Check.

First aid kit? Check.

 

… With extra bandages, pain killers, materials for splints, and several dozen doses of spiderant antivenom. Bottles of antibiotics for treating skag bites jingled as he nudged them aside, making sure he had enough pairs of socks wedged between them to keep them from breaking during the ride.

 

Maybe it was overkill, but he doubted a place called ‘The Dust’ would be as clean, safe or well-stocked as the Hyperion facilities he was used to. Especially since it was on _Pandora_. And there really was nothing worse than sand in one’s boots.

 

God, he hoped this trip would be worth it. His shuttle would land in Opportunity before moving on through the Highlands and into the wastes beyond; no doubt as soon as they landed he’d be greeted by someone trying to convince him to move off the lunar orbiter and into Jack’s new city. He snorted at the thought. As if he’d willingly live on a planet where the ‘suggested items’ list included several pistols and grenades listed as _necessities_.

 

Necessities someone thought he would ignore evidently, judging by the pistol that someone had tucked inside his bag. He didn’t spend much time (read: any) working with the weapons developers, but the dainty red and silver gun looked nothing like the usual gaudy yellow things whose images were plastered all over the base. It tingled his fingers as he picked it up, noting the light weight, the practical handle, the shining blue that peeked out between the plates of metal. And there, engraved in a familiar hand along the grip. _Lady Fist (v2.6755). Take care down there._

 

An experimental gun.

 

He exhaled.

 

Loath as he was to take it, someone--he had a feeling who--had gone through a lot to get this to him. He couldn’t leave it behind without it being discovered when his room was cleaned, and… well. While a shock weapon wouldn’t be much use on the wildlife he was to collect... he had to admit it’d be better than nothing. A bullet was a bullet.

 

Assuming he could hold his hands steady enough to aim. He could cut as precisely as any laser in the operating room, but the second he tried to level a gun...

 

Exhaling, he shoved those thoughts and the gun away into the bag. If he needed muscle, there were the Loaders. He’d keep the gun, but. He wouldn’t fire it. Not unless he had no choice. His hands would stay clean, the job would get finished, and he could hose the chunks off robots before the return trip. With that in mind and a smile on his face, he zipped up the bag with one

last glance around the room, one last pat-down check of his pockets--jacket and pants both--and flicked off the lights as he turned his back on his humble, bare room. _On to Pandora._

 

____________________

 

Aed had sneezed seconds after he’d boarded the shuttle, covering his face against the delicate clouds of dust that rose from the floor. The seats wheezed dust when he sat down, when he looked at them, when the engine rumbled to life and shook more dust from the ceiling. He had a feeling if he pulled up his sleeves, he’d have a bandit’s tan of dust.

 

Well. That probably wasn’t the correct term, he mused. From the ah… awfully descriptive pamphlets shoved into the drawers, Pandora’s bandits didn’t seem to believe in shirts. Or dental care. Or not _eating_ people.

 

He put that pamphlet back. It was easier to settle into reading the notes about Pandora’s wildlife.

 

Aedan had been born on Elpis, which had been host to its own horde of deadly creatures. In a way, the entries on stalkers and threshers came as a delight; terrifying though they were, it would be interesting to see how the two species differed due to not just the landscape, but the presence of an actual atmosphere. That was one thing to be grateful for, at least. He wouldn’t have to clean all this fucking dust out of an oxygen pack’s vents.

 

Rakks and their Hives intrigued him. He traced the rough image of their wings, the poorly defined shape of their mouths and fangs, marked by several unhelpful arrows and question marks, all the way down to their whip tails, and couldn’t help but wonder if they shared any ancestry with the Rathyds of his home. Probably the two species had simply evolved to _not_ be on the ground with everything else; be it Kraggons on Elpis, or Skags on Pandora, he couldn’t blame them for developing flight to stay away.

 

Maybe he’d be able to get a specimen. A trade with another scientific team, perhaps. There had been others drifting around the shuttle dock, each with other objectives, though they all boiled down to the same thing: acquire specimens and bring them back to the Wildlife Preserve that Jack was establishing near Opportunity. It would be a way to preserve and study the unique and varied wildlife of the backwater planet, he’d said, for those who would eventually come to live in Hyperion’s paradise.

 

It’d be easy. He’d dealt with Torks back home. He could deal with Pandora’s own over-sized scavengers. Sneak into a nest, grab some eggs, head back home. Open and shut.

 

Outside the thick shuttle windows, the Hyperion Moon Base slowly grew smaller, and far below on Pandora, a telltale streak of white-orange flame whizzed through the night sky above the endless deserts, unnoticed by all but a lone figure. Wrapped in once-white cloaks, he sipped his pilfered booze as he traced the arc of the shuttle across the sky from his vantage point above the desert. A pair of rakks squawked behind him over the remnants of an unfortunate invader as the man unfolded, rolling his neck, tossing the empty bottle down to the rocks below before he vanished back into a small shack built into the side of the cliff.

 

His skills were in demand here in the Dusts, and the location remote enough to prevent those who disapproved of his business from doing anything about it. But it didn’t take much experience to be able to tell the difference between a moonshot and a shuttle, and Saga would be sure to keep an eye on the rails heading out of the highlands over the next few days to learn more of what bounty might be heading his way.

  
Hyperion parts--be they mechanical or human--always fetched a good price, and Saga already had a buyer in mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes Aedan has a Lady Fist. I know it's a unique weapon, but this is an experimental one Hyperion has been fiddling with based on the blueprints they stole. 
> 
> Anyway! Saga isn't Mordecai, but damn does he have a lot of similarities with him. Including probably cooing over tiny hatchlings and drinking a lot of booze, but really, would you want to drink the water on Pandora? You won't see much of him. He's going to wreck some shit and then go back to being a hermit with his Rakks. 
> 
> The other main character of this work and pairing will show up next chapter :y 
> 
> ... About the OCs in this though. Aedan, Saga, and the soon-to-be-introduced third character belong to Cytokiine and I, and this story is kind of. A self-indulgent AU that I decided I wanted to write a few weeks ago when I started replaying BL2. So uh. If you read this, I hope you like it! And I hope this chapter at least serves as a decent intro to Aed.


End file.
